These are the guns used in the battery in which the artist served. They fire a 300-pound projectile and
are used chiefly for destroying dugouts and emplacements, and blowing in trenches and barb-wire.

M

R. THURSTAN TOPHAM, who made these sketches, is an artist who joined the Canadian forces and served in France as a gunner with the 1st Canadian Siege Battery.

While abroad he was employed largely in making panoramic observation sketches for use in range-finding, etc. After being wounded he was invalided home to Canada on the ill-fated hospital ship Llandovery Castle, which was afterward sunk in a dastardly way by the Hun submarines.

Mr. Topham is now discharged from the army and in Canada working the material he brought back from the front into larger canvases of the war. One of his pictures has been selected by the committee to be hung in the Canadian National Academy.

The following sketches were made by him at various times during the battle of the Somme in 1916. Of the sketch of Fricourt and "Happy Valley" appearing on the opposite page, Mr. Topham says:

"The village of Fricourt, or rather the ruins that were once a village, is seen on the ridge in the middle distance. This was one of the most strongly organized defenses of the Germans at the opening of the Somme offensive, and was the centre of bitter hand-to-hand fighting, notwithstanding its continuous bombardment for four days and nights by guns of all calibers, from 17-inch naval guns to 18-pounders. My own battery helped materially in smashing up the defenses. Dugouts here had often thirty-three steps down."

Fricourt and "Happy Valley" after its bombardment and capture by the British.

Unloading shells from the lorry on the Albert Braye roadside at night.

After unloading, the shells are slid down the bank and rolled to the gun, where they are checked off. All have to be accounted for.